Lee Geiger

Watch today’s video blog…Father’s Day 2014

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

Augusten Burroughs

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. Today’s post is a bit more reflective than most. I hope you enjoy it

Five years ago today, two events happened within hours of each other that forever changed the lens cap on my mental mindset. First, I received news that my father had passed away. And then, two hours later, my oldest son graduated from high school.

The world hasn’t looked the same to me since.

June 2009 was already a tipping point in time. The stock market had bounced back nicely from its March lows, yet my kid’s 529 College Savings account had been cut nearly in half. My entrepreneurial journey into the motorcycle biz was mercifully over, but the poorly-timed venture butchered my savings. My new job at Penserra Securities was a gas, but our young firm was living a hand-to-mouth existence. And while the energy level in the Geiger household was registering an all-time high, The Red Headed Kid would soon depart for Brown, and thoughts of an empty chair at the dinner table nagged at my soul.

“Are we going to your dad’s funeral?” asked The Pretty Blonde, sweating bullets alongside me in the football stadium bleachers, waiting for the late afternoon graduation procession to begin. Her angelic face wore a discernible look of concern. In two days we were scheduled to leave for a European family vacation, a trip-of-a-lifetime she had spent a year painstakingly piecing together. An impromptu trip to Mississippi wasn’t just an inconvenience; it was a deal killer.

Tuition bills were on the way. Job security was non-existent. And now this. Life wasn’t a burden, but it sure was complicated. I needed to prioritize, clarify, and focus. Fast.

“Nope,” I said, delivering an answer in less time than a Google search for “Geiger billionaires.”

“But what about your family?” she continued. The gravity of her follow-up question bore no weight whatsoever. She may as well have well been asking me what I wanted for dinner.

“My family’s here,” I said. And that was that. Life has been a lot simpler ever since.

I loved my father. But his definition of “family” was different than mine. Dad grew up in rural Mississippi during the Great Depression, where every mouth in his house was viewed as an obligation rather than a blessing. In his world of poverty and World War, when it came to family survival, all hands were on deck. It mattered what you were, rather than who you were. Dad passed on this trait to his own family. He loved his children, no doubt, but he didn’t have, nor make, the time to get to know them. When it came to his family, Dad was management and his five sons were labor. I don’t fault him for this. That’s just the way he was wired.

I didn’t attend Dad’s funeral, and neither did any of his other sons. I rationalized my absence by paying for it. In the end, not one of his children made the trip to Mississippi to say goodbye. That’s sad. And pathetic. Dad wasn’t perfect, but neither are we. Five years of hindsight later, I’ve come to realize he did the best he could, the only way he knew how. He deserved better.

I’ve committed my life to knowing my sons, to watch them grow, mature and evolve. But just as important, I want them to know me. I’ve made a bazillion mistakes, exercised extremely poor judgment, and too often put my nose in places where it shouldn’t have been. But no matter what they do, where they live, or how they live their lives, I’ll love my boys until the day I die, and nothing can ever change that.

And I hope they’ll come to my funeral.